When Edgar Rice Burroughs first mailed his manuscripts
to magazine editors, they often were not pleased with the stories on first
reading. These editors then had three options open to them. The first,
and the one used most often, was to return the story to the author with
a rejection slip. Second, the editor could return the story with a request
that Burroughs revise it along suggested lines and resubmit it. Finally,
the editor could turn the story over to a member of his staff for rewriting
and then seek Burroughs’ permission to print the story as revised.

When the editor undertook the revision process in house,
it often resulted in radical departure, not only from Burroughs’ text,
but also from Burroughs’ style. The two most obvious examples of this are
when Chandler White turned Tarzan and the Forbidden City into The
Red Star of Tarzan for a 1938 appearance in Argosy, and when
Leo Margulies’ turned Burroughs’ Murder in the Jungle into Tarzan and
the Jungle Murders for Thrilling Adventures in 1940.

Another story that underwent major reconstructive surgery
on the editor’s desk was Beware! Burroughs’ efforts to market the
24,000-word story, written in 1922, are detailed in Irwin Porges’ biography
of ERB. Munsey editor Bob Davis returned Burroughs’ first submission with
an evaluation labeling it, “the nearest approach to mediocrity that ever
came from your pen.” After a series of other rejections, Raymond Palmer
finally purchased the story in 1939 for his Fantastic Adventures.
Palmer oversaw major changes in the story, and it finally appeared under
the title The Scientists Revolt in the July 1939 issue of the magazine.

Burroughs’ original version of the story was an attempt
at a suspenseful, contemporary mystery. The tale opens in the mythical
kingdom of Assuria with the royal family under siege in the palace. The
new-born Crown Prince Alexander is spirited out of the country disguised
as the son of a loyal officer, Lt. Terrance Donovan. The next day Alexander’s
parents disappear after the rebels storm the palace.

The story then jumps 22 years forward, apparently to contemporary
times. Macklin Donovan, who the reader assumes to be the aforementioned
crown prince, is unaware of his true identity and is working as a secret
service agent for the U.S. government. “Mackie” is conducting an undercover
investigation of wealthy American Mason Thorn and his relationship with
a gang of Assurians. Mackie arrives at the Thorn townhouse, where the remainder
of the story takes place during the ensuing night. In addition to Donovan
and Thorn, the principals gathered at the house include the butler Goertz,
Count Saranov, and his daughter Nariva, who Mackie has fallen in love with.
After Mason Thorn is shot dead in the hallway outside Nariva’s door, Goertz
disappears and Lt. Terrance Donovan is part of the police contingent that
arrives to investigate the murder. The story then becomes an overnight
hodgepodge of warning notes, gunshots, and disappearing characters.

The rewrite that resulted in The Scientists Revolt
produced changes of two general types. First, modifications were made to
increase the readability and pace of the story. Second, elements were altered
and added to transform the story from a contemporary mystery to a science
fiction story.

Palmer’s editor must have been concerned about the slow
pace of Beware! because he made several changes so the story would
read easier and faster. For starters, The Scientists Revolt has
more paragraphing. Many of Burroughs’ long paragraphs were split into two
or three parts to make the story less formidable to the reader’s eye. The
adding of chapter titles was probably another cosmetic feature to give
the story more surface attraction.

A more significant change, however, aimed at increasing
the pace of the story was the deletion of much of Burroughs’ background
information. Palmer’s editor edited out any material he felt did not contribute
to moving the action forward. For instance, a Beware! paragraph
reads, “The three men walked directly to Macklin’s room, which like the
hall, was in darkness, although Donovan distinctly recalled that the lamp
on the reading table had been lighted when he left the room. Just inside
the doorway was a switch which operated two inverted dome lights suspended
from the ceiling. Macklin pressed this switch and the room was flooded
with light.” The Scientists’ Revolt shortens the middle sentence
to, “Just inside the doorway was a switch.” The rewrite editor apparently
judged the reference to what it operated as extraneous.

Again, in Beware!, when Macklin’s room is being
searched by the police, Count Saranov becomes impatient for the gun he
had planted to be found and suggests Captain Bushor search Mackie’s bed.
In his version, Burroughs had Bushor ignore the suggestion for several
moments while he searched several other pieces of furniture before turning
to the bed. Palmer’s version sends Bushor straight to the bed after the
suggestion. Again, the action was being pushed along in the magazine version.

Several longer background passages were removed as well.
In Beware!, after Mackie stumbles into the adjoining mystery house
and is pushed back through the closet into the Thorn house, he has a conversation
with his two police guards concerning where he has been the past few minutes.
Revolt leaves out this four-paragraph discussion. In all, more than a thousand
words were removed from Beware! by eliminating Burroughs’ background
information. (The length of the two stories is about equal, however, since
in other places Palmer’s directed rewrite added about as much as was cut
out.)

Not only did Palmer’s editor remove material to speed
up the story, but he also added a couple of subtle elements for the same
purpose. After hearing a scream at night, Mackie forces Nariva’s door with
his shoulder. To give the scene a greater sense of action, Revolt
adds, “The bolt and keeper tore through the wooden frame and the door swung
inward.” To enhance suspense in another situation, a Burroughs sentence
which reads, “Mystified, Donovan came from the closet and locked the door,”
was changed to read, “Hair crawling on his scalp with eerie pricklings,
Donovan came from the closest and locked the door.”

All of these changes to speed the pace of the story really
do very little to alter the mood Burroughs created. In fact, they are the
kind of changes that the author probably would have made himself if the
editor had so requested. However, the changes made to transform the story
out of the world of realism and into the realm of science fiction were
so extreme that they should have earned Palmer’s editor a credit as co-author.

First, Revolt moves the setting of the story well
into the future. In Beware! the prologue concerns the escape of
baby Alexander from Assuria. The first chapter is titled, “Twenty-two Years
Later,” and apparently puts the main action of the story in a time-frame
contemporary with its writing. In the magazine version, the prologue carries
the date “2190 A.D.” With the same twenty-two-year advance in chapter one,
the story resumes in the twenty-third century.

Palmer had to remove several other references to a twentieth
century setting. Dropped is Mackie’s suspicion of Thorn that, “At first
we thought the Reds had gotten hold of him.” Cut also is Mackie’s conclusion
that he “might as well connect Young Roosevelt or Joe Cannon with Red activities
as a Glassock of Philadelphia.” Palmer’s version labels the law officers
in the story as “strato-police,” and so Lt. Terrance Donovan’s recollection
of walking a beat as a young policeman is necessarily dropped. A reference
to Kipling, along with six lines from his poem Tommy, appear in Beware!
but not in Revolt. Finally, in Beware! a rattled housemaid exclaims,
“I wouldn’t go back to my room alone if you’d give me Broadway.” In the
Fantastic Adventures version, Broadway gives way in the housemaid’s hyperbole
to “Television Follies.”

To inject an atmosphere of science in the story, Palmer’s
editor had Burroughs’ traditional emphasis on monarch rule changed to rule
based on scientific knowledge. The ancient ruling dynasty of Assuria becomes
a “science dynasty.” This alteration required a wealth of terminology changes
throughout the text, such as dropping or changing titles. The “emperor”
becomes the “Science Ruler;” the title “prince” is dropped in reference
to Sanders and Alexander; and “Her majesty” is omitted in reference to
the Science Ruler’s wife. In Beware! the characters Semepovski and
Drovoff are said to be the respective heads of the “monarchist” and “Republican”
parties. In Revolt their namesakes Sanders and Danard head the “scientists’
party” and the “so-called New Freedom Party.”

In dropping all references to the Assurian royal family,
the following passage concerning Macklin Donovan’s education was deleted:
“There had been other things in his education that had seemed in a way
bizarre—fencing, for example, and riding; two accomplishments that his
father had insisted upon his gaining proficiency in.”

To provide a foundation for a society based on science,
Revolt included a long footnote at the end of the Prologue to explain the
rise and fall of the Science dynasty. The opening chapter contains two
added two paragraphs on the success of science in America and on Mackie’s
job as a Secret Service agent to investigate elements threatening that
science-based society. In the same chapter an interesting change eliminated
a sexist reference and replaced it with a prejudiced one based on science.
“From Beware!: “You know I never smoke. I don’t approve of women
smoking.” From Revolt: “You know I never smoke. It’s unscientific
and harmful.”

Palmer’s version invented and added some technologically
advanced gadgets to boost the futuristic backdrop of the story. A paragraph
in Beware! that has Mackie take a conventional taxi to the Thorn
house was replaced in Revolt with a paragraph that has Mackie going
to an aerial taxi tower to catch an air-taxi. The conventional guns used
in Beware! were changed to “needle pistols” in the Palmer directed
rewrite. A two-sentence footnote explains that the needle pistol fires
a tiny, needle-shaped pellet. The switch from bullets to small pellets
then required a couple alterations in the text. “The report of a firearm
reverberated through the house,” became, “The faint report of a needle
pistol came to his ears.”

The biggest addition of gadgetry, and Palmer’s major contribution
to the story, was the changing of the Thorn townhouse to the Thorn Tower.
In Beware! the Thorn house, situated in a fashionable neighborhood,
has balconies on its exterior, and the houses on either side are “similarly
disfigured by these mid-Victorian atrocities.” It turns out that Drovoff
and Saranov used the house on one side as a base to come and go from the
Thorn house in their efforts to kill Mackie. While the conspirators use
the secret passages through the closets of the two houses, Mackie, in his
investigations, makes the trip to the mystery house by two other routes.
First, he climbs along the balconies and enters a window of the adjacent
house, and later he makes his way next door by using the scuttles on the
roofs of the two houses. Only at the end of the story does Goertz demonstrate
to the Donovans, and the reader, the passages through the closets.

In Revolt the neighborhood is not marked by fashionable
houses. Rather, the Thorn Tower is situated amidst, “the giant hive of
Lower New York, with its half-mile high buildings, housing thirty-four
millions of people.” The Thorn Tower is described as being one of the two
tallest towers in the vicinity, with another tower of comparable height
about a mile away. In Beware! Mackie never discovers the secret
of the closet, but in Revolt he does. It turns out that Nariva’s
closet is also a “radio-transmitter of matter.” Mackie enters the closet,
pulls a coat hangar, and after being bathed in a weird blue light, finds
himself transported to the matching tower a mile away. Beware!’s
seven paragraphs taking Mackie between the two buildings by way of the
scuttles was completely rewritten for Revolt into 12 paragraphs
about Mackie’s transmission between the two towers. Near the end of the
story, as Greeves shows the Donovans the secret of the transportation between
the two towers, Palmer’s editor added a footnote explaining the principle
of radio transmission of matter.

Finally, in viewing Palmer’s sponsored rewrite, there
are a couple of other minor, but interesting, changes to be noted. First,
the magazine version removes a racially offensive word from Burroughs’
text. When Officer McGroarty broke through Saranov’s door, Burroughs had
Terrance Donovan observe tongue-in-cheek, “There is nothing heavier than
a ton of Mick.” In Revolt the final word is changed to “Irish.” The closing
line of Beware! has Mackie telling Nariva, “Emperor or Mick, I’m going
to marry you.” In Revolt the closing line reads, “Prince of Science
or Mackie, I’m going to marry you.”

A final change involved Burroughs’ repeated reference
to a mannerism that Macklin Donovan exhibited. When Mackie finds the note
he supposes is from Nariva requesting that he come to her room, his “right
palm went to the back of his neck in a characteristic gesture of perplexity.”
While Revolt retains this passage, it deletes two other later references
to the same mannerism. In his room, as he later ponders Nariva’s role in
the adventures of the night, the hand goes to the back of Mackie’s neck
a second time. Again, as he wonders what information his father is keeping
from him, “The inevitable palm went to the back of his neck and rubbed
slowly back and forth.” These last two occurrences are left out of the
magazine version, and with the story being weak enough in characterization,
it’s puzzling that the one mannerism that gives Macklin Donovan, the lead
character, some distinctiveness was purposely weakened.

In conclusion, it seems that Palmer’s efforts to make
the story read easier and faster do work. Reading The Scientists Revolt
is less of a chore than tackling Beware! However, the changes to
make it a science fiction story are ineffective. The story remains essentially
a murder mystery, and moving it into the future with its added gadgetry
adds nothing to the plot. In fact, compared with Beware! the setting
of Revolt is bothersome. Beware! may be a rehash of an at-the-time
already overdone scenario, but at least the setting, the characters, and
plot work together, unlike in The Scientists Revolt, where they
seem to be continually getting in each other’s way.